After Almost Three Weeks Chicago’s Own ‘Baby Doe’ Remains Unidentified
It’s a crime so horrific that even the police were stunned: the dismembered remains of an unidentifed child found in Chicago’s Garfield Park. And while the recently identified “Baby Doe” – Bella Bond – has finally gotten her name back, this “Baby Doe” is still unknown.
On Sunday September 6, the Chicago police found the left foot of a small child in Garfield Park around 5:40 in the evening. They were alerted to the find by a park visitor who called 911 to report a foot floating in a lagoon. Further searches of the park and a nearby lagoon were able to uncover the head, right foot, and both hands. The body parts had been weighed down. Chicago’s Baby Doe was African-American, two to four years old, and had brown hair and brown eyes. The doe was likely male, but the gender of the baby could not be definitively determined. The body had been dismembered after death, and the body parts may have been placed in plastic bags that they later floated out of.
Out of all the missing children in the country, two have been widely speculated to be Chicago’s Baby Doe. King Walker went missing from Gary, Indiana along with his developementally disabled aunt, Diamond Bynum, in July. Diamond was reportedly sighted in August, but she and King have not been seen since. Police have said they don’t think the Chicago Baby Doe is King for a variety of reasons, but are testing his DNA against the child anyway. The other child being tested, Malik Drummond, vanished from Arkansas under unclear circumstances in November.
However, like in so many of these cases, it’s most likely that the Chicago Baby Doe was never reported missing, and met his death at the hands of a parent. And just like with the death of the original Baby Doe, Bella Bond, it was likely violent.
These cases affect the officers that attend to them as much as the shocked public is affected by them: one officer who had served in New York in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks was reminded of that when the remains of Chicago Baby Doe were found. He said the experience taught him to make sure that officers would be given a chance to psychologically cope with such a disturbing find.
While Baby Doe’s image was shared almost 60 million times on facebook, the Chicago Baby Doe hasn’t had that sort of publicity, possibly due to the disturbing nature of the case. A picture of him is on Facebook, however, and it couldn’t hurt if everyone who reads this shares the picture of Chicago’s own Baby Doe.
(Image via Chicago Police Department.)
